TWINING, Alexander Catlin, engineer, born in New Haven, Connecticut, 5 July, 1801 ; died there, 22 November, 1884. He was graduated at Yale in 1820, was a tutor there in 1824-'6, and professor of mathematics, civil engineering, and astronomy at Middlebury college from 1839 till 1849. He was employed as a civil engineer on various railways and canals, and invented the first practical method of producing ice in considerable quantities by artificial means. He claimed to have first established the theory of the cosmical origin of meteors, and was devoted to abstruse problems in higher mathematics. He was the author of papers on the doctrine of parallels and other points in mathematics. For several years preceding his death he lectured on constitutional law in the Yale law-school.--His son, Kingsley, clergyman, born in West Point, New York, 18 July, 1832, was graduated at Yale in 1853, and at Yale theological seminary in 1856, and was a resident licentiate at Andover seminary in 1857. He held pastorates in Congregational churches in Hinsdale, Michigan, San Francisco, California, Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island, in 1872-'6. He spent 1876-'8 in Europe, and two years later he became literary editor of the New York "Independent, a position which he still retains.